


home is the soldier back from the war (him, always him)

by mostlikelydefinentlymad



Series: under 1k fic [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Inspired by GIFs, M/M, Pining Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: Civil War, Sam Wilson Feels, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson Friendship, Steve Rogers Feels, Stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-21 23:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6062302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlikelydefinentlymad/pseuds/mostlikelydefinentlymad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Home feels...like fingertips on your skin after a mean right hand hook that leaves you dizzy. It feels warm and solid, lighter than it should be; bruised and battered but...well it feels like the pages of your favorite book when you trace the words and memorize them even though you know what's going to happen next. </p><p>It's like someone touching your spine and making your skin itch but in a good way so you start walking around your undershirt in hopes that it'll happen again."</p>
            </blockquote>





	home is the soldier back from the war (him, always him)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [someone asked me to describe home](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/177319) by stevie-pinkie-pie-rogers. 



> home: the place where one lives.  
> AoU  
> Sam: Found a place in Brookyln yet?  
> Steve: I don't think I can afford a place in Brooklyn.  
> Sam: Home is home, right?  
> Steve: [looks away, sadly]

There is a wistful look in Steve's eye; a far away place that he can see in his mind as if it were close enough to touch.

They're sat in another shoddy hotel room with questionable lumpy beds, a television that requires bunny ears (as Sam calls them) in order to get reception, a scratched up dresser and square table for two shoved up against a wall & its been one year and six months since they've stopped to smell the roses, stopped to breathe in the night air.

Neither want to admit it but the reason they're both wide awake at four thirty in the morning is because sleep became a battlefield ages ago and the mind refuses to forget.

A moment prior, Sam had stretched out on his own bed and filled the silence with heavy words, a question without asking - "What is home to you?"

They'd had a similar conversation about this subject before and Steve had clamped up, covered with a generic - "I don't know."

But he did, he does.

"Well," he begins - elbows leaning on the uneven table as he holds a pen tightly, having abandoned the sketch he'd been working on (a hybrid Bucky - Steve's heart melding the two versions together).

"You remember those little chocolate snacks? Buns I think they were called?"

Sam shakes his head no.

"Anyway...home is that color - soft brown and warm between your fingers; like hazel silk in tangled knots or smoothed down with pomade, sometimes messy at 630 in the morning when the sun comes up and the alarm clock sounds."

Sam crinkles his forehead then schools his expression back to blank as Steve turns to him. "And?"

Steve begins to sketch as he speaks, pen scraping against thin complimentary hotel paper - "It's um...home is a Brooklyn accent telling an embarrassing story in the trenches - beginning and ending with muffled hysterical laughing then a shove against my shoulder."

None of this is the answer Sam expected but Steve is being open for the first time in probably decades and it's the shape his healing is taking.

"How does home feel?," he asks.

Another stroke along the paper - "Home feels...like fingertips on your skin after a mean right hand hook that leaves you dizzy. It feels warm and solid, lighter than it should be; bruised and battered but...well it feels like the pages of your favorite book when you trace the words and memorize them even though you know what's going to happen next. It's a callused hand on curved spine and making your skin itch but in a good way so you start walking around in your undershirt in hopes that it'll happen again."

Sam nods - "I'm listening."

Steve is smiling to himself now as he continues to sketch and Sam can't remember the last time he saw the sun come out from behind dark clouds - that's what Steve's smile looks like. His own personal storm - finding the eye of it and holding on.

Steve clears his throat and drifts away once more - "Home is waking up to a softness that you never knew existed - warm and slightly chapped, cupid's bow on the top of his lip and the first time I kissed it. It's coming in from the rain with a split lip and getting a lecture followed by the lightest brush of lips against the side of your mouth - turning at the last minute and kissing him for the first time (does first grade count? I don't think it counts)."

Steve leans back and sighs, crumples the drawing and tosses it in the basket. He realizes that Sam is watching him with a familiar expression in his eyes - the same one Steve sees when he looks in the mirror; sadness.

"I don't know what home feels like anymore," he replies with a smile that he doesn't feel.

Sam had expected a geographical location but had gotten a tragedy instead and that was just as well. If someone were to ask him what home felt like it wouldn't be a place either - it'd be palms against pale skin and familiar blue eyes.

He swallows past the lump in his throat and squeezes Steve's shoulder - "You will, man, you will."

Without a word Steve retrieves the balled up paper and passes it to him - it's crumpled and wrinkled but the features are unmistakably Bucky's. In the sketch he stands with one arm around Steve's shoulders and the other gripping a sharpened knife, his hair is mid-length on one side and cropped on the other; chaos and order - two sides of the same coin, he is one half Winter Soldier and one half James Buchanan Barnes; they are same and yet different.

He is both and neither.

Sam understands - Steve's idea of home is a hurricane with blue eyes, you will not find it on a map.

He says nothing as he carefully folds the sketch up and passes it to Steve.

Home is the soldier back from the war, is the place where one lives, it has always been Bucky.

Sam's has been demolished and buried, he is homesick in a way that time will never heal but Steve has the chance to go home again and he'll make damn sure he gets there.

**Author's Note:**

> Buns are a '40s chocolate treat:  
> http://pearsonscandy.com/candy/bun-bar
> 
> all credit for fic inspiration goes to stevie-pinkie-pie-rogers


End file.
